Prof. Laura Gagliardi received the Isaiah Shavitt Lecture Award 2016

This year Isaiah Shavitt lectureship award was received by Prof. Laura Gagliardi from the University of Minnesota. This is the third annual event in memory of Isaiah Shavitt.

Isaiah Shavitt was a pioneer in the field of theoretical chemistry and widely regarded as one of the founders of computational chemistry. Developed efficient methods to treat electron correlation and applied these methods to a broad range of chemistry problems. Developed one of the first software packages for quantum chemistry, named COLUMBUS, that involved many millions of terms in the Configuration Interaction expansion. In 2009, together with his coauthor, Prof. Rodney Bartlett, Prof. Shavitt published a definitive reference book, “Many-Body Methods in Chemistry and Physics. Isaiah (Shi) Shavitt left a legacy of theoretical chemists.

Each year there is a weekly workshop on quantum mechanics in chemistry: from structure to dynamics. This year’s events were organized by Prof. Maytal Caspary Toroker from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Prof. Laura Gagliardi delivered a mini-course for graduate students on correlation theory with hands-on experience in state of the art computational methods. The week ended with a one day symposium hosting theoretical or computational chemists and materials scientists from other universities in Israel, and a colloquium by the I. Shavitt lecturer.